Behind the Music Scene – November 2026

YOU MAY NOT KNOW the face, but if you listen to local radio you definitely know the voice. You’ve been listening to it for 38 years. Brian O’Connor has been a mainstay of local radio since KTMT gave him a weekend slot, in 1988, when he was 15. “It took awhile to get the nerves out,” O’Connor recalls of those early days, “but man, it was thrilling!”

The nerves are surprising, because, by the time he was a DJ of 15, O’Connor was already something of a radio industry veteran. He’d been doing phone-in bits for KTMT’s morning show since he was 12. “I did characters, Ronald Reagan, stuff like that,” he says. Before long, pre-teen Brian was a fixture around the studio. “I’d come in and just hang out when I didn’t have school.”

A few years later, the station offered him the noon-to-six slot on Sundays, only five years after 10-year-old Brian, enraptured by a radio station tour arranged by an aunt, began “broadcasting” to the family living room on his Mr. Microphone—and 15 years since, per O’Connor family lore, an in-utero Brian was caught kicking along to the tunes at church.

In 1991, upon his high school graduation, the station offered him a full-time job. Thanks to collusion between the station and his parents (each side kept tabs on his grades), O’Connor was well-positioned for college, but even his high school guidance counselor advised against it, telling him, “You’re already doing what you love.”

Almost four decades later, O’Connor is now the longest-running on-air personality in the region, having checked off numerous bucket list items—like meeting Weird Al Yankovic—along the way. He presently has an afternoon show on 96.9 The Rogue, but his duties have expanded to include Operations Manager for the five-station Opus Broadcasting Group and Program Director for four of the five. He admits to missing some of the hands-on work that technology has replaced, but still calls radio and music his “first loves.”

For certain there have been opportunities to veer away from those first loves. Drafted into theater while in high school, he recalls, “A big senior pulled me out of line for the bus, marched me down to auditions and said, ‘You’re going to do this!’” O’Connor recently took to the stage after a decades-long break, playing Paul Sycamore in Camelot Theater’s staging of You Can’t Take it With You, adding to a resume with Camelot that since 2006 has included marketing, creative services and production duties.

In October, he directed Camelot’s Spotlight on George Harrison. He also hosts two podcasts—horror movie-themed Opening Kill and Camelot’s podcast, Where Broadway Meets Talent, operates a professional photography business and writes screenplays he hopes to produce—locally, with local talent. “I’m not looking to be rich and famous,” he explains. “I just want to pay the bills, have a good life and be able to pursue the things I want to pursue.”

And getting to meet Weird Al Yankovic? “Well, that’s just a perk!”